


snowed in

by lydiastilinskis



Series: College: The Mini Series [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 16:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10700595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiastilinskis/pseuds/lydiastilinskis
Summary: "He lifted his covers and stood up in the middle of his room, thoughts and plans whirling around his head. He didn’t want to wait an indefinite amount of time to see her. He wanted to see her now – or, at least, in eight hours’ time when he arrived at her dorm. Scott had given Roscoe back to him after saying he couldn’t drive stick shift anyway, and it felt weird driving the Jeep that had always belonged to Stiles, so Stiles had his car back."When a snowstorm along the east coast prevents Stiles from visiting Lydia at MIT like they've been planning for months, they both take matters into their own hands to get to each other.





	snowed in

Lydia Martin pushed open the door to her dorm room on campus and collapsed onto her bed, removing her phone from her pocket to scan the notifications on her phone that she’d missed during her two-hour long lecture on Calculus II.

She had three messages from Malia, who had asked her twice if they could FaceTime later so they could chat about college, and another message asking her if she knew how to make cappuccinos without a machine. Typical Malia texts.

Sighing, Lydia scrolled past those messages and searched for the name she always looked forward to seeing on her screen. Stiles had text her five times during the lecture _and_ she had several missed calls from him too. He was supposed to drive to Massachusetts the next day so they could spend a long weekend together, and she suspected he was calling her to ask her something about their plans.

She didn’t need to wait long before he picked up the phone.

" _Finally_!” he cried, without saying hello. “I’ve been calling you all morning. Where have you been?”

“In a lecture,” she replied, rifling through her bag and pulling out a binder of her notes from the lecture. “Unlike _some_ people I know, I actually attend all my classes. I have one hundred —”

“Percent attendance, yeah, yeah,” Stiles said. She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was rolling his eyes, but also smiling. “I know. You may have mentioned that once or twice.”

“Have I?”

“Yes,” he replied jovially. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“I have another lecture in two hours,” she said, “then I’m finished for the weekend. What time do you think you can get on the road?”

Stiles hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. Lydia knew when he was hiding something.

“What?” she asked. “Why have you gone quiet?”

“There’s snow forecast for tonight and early tomorrow.”

Lydia didn’t answer immediately, even though she knew that would panic Stiles on the other end of the phone. She’d been planning for Stiles’s trip to MIT for months. It was February already, and the last time they’d seen each other had been over Christmas break.

They’d both been so swamped with studying and reading to do that they’d barely seen each other then, only managing to fit in a couple of movies and study sessions over at Stiles’s house. Even then, their conversations had been minimal and mostly transactional (“Whose turn is it to make the coffee?”, “Are we ordering food or meeting the others later?” were just a few of the thrilling conversations they’d had together during that break) as they were both cramming for their individual returns to college.

Then, back at college for the past few months, they’d still both been overwhelmed by their workloads – they barely even had time for a phone call every night and to text every day, let alone _visiting_ each other.

  
That was why Lydia had been looking forward to the weekend for so long. For what felt like forever. Even during Christmas, when she’d been lying on Stiles’s comfortable bed with her hair spilling over her shoulders and her shoes kicked off, she’d been looking forward to _this_ weekend.

They’d both worked harder than ever during the week to get all their work completed so they could spend the entire weekend just with each other. No discussions of papers, or proofreading systems, or how many hours they’d spent in the library that week (they’d had an ongoing competition since the first week of college, which Lydia always won) – just spending time together like a regular couple.

  
She just wanted a few quiet days with Stiles, her boyfriend, because even though they’d been dating since summer – she didn’t feel like they’d spent any time together at all.

  
“Lydia?” Stiles’s tentative voice asked at the other end of the phone, and Lydia pushed aside the huge binder on her lap to fully focus on the conversation.

“Lydia? You still there?”

  
“I’m still here,” she answered with a sigh. “I just … I really wanted to see you this weekend – I had it all planned out.”

  
“I know,” Stiles replied. “I wanted to see you too, but there are weather warnings everywhere. It’s an eight-hour drive.”

  
“But —” Lydia cut herself off. She didn’t want to get angry at Stiles for something he couldn’t control. “Okay. I guess we’ll see each other another time?”

  
“Soon,” he promised, sounding like he meant it.

Lydia shuffled up onto her bed and leant against the wall, cocking her head against her shoulder so she could balance her phone there as she pulled the binder up to her lap again. Reading her notes kept her sane and kept her focused, and she was dangerously close to losing her composure. Not with Stiles, but with the situation.

  
“What’s your record for this week, then?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

She appreciated his efforts.

  
“Fifty-two hours.”

  
“Fifty-two?” he repeated flatly. “How is that even _possible_? I was in the library all day Monday and Tuesday but I only racked up thirty-one.”

  
“Well, then you clearly weren’t in the library all day Monday and Tuesday,” she replied, keeping her voice light. “Maybe next week you’ll finally beat me.”

  
“I’m only a freshman,” Stiles reminded her, “I don’t need to spend fifty-two hours in the library every week. Not everybody starts college as a junior, Lydia.”

  
She laughed, but her heart wasn’t in it and he could tell. He usually found it easy to make her laugh – or at least make her roll her eyes and suppress a smile, which, for Lydia, was pretty much the equivalent of a laugh. He knew that she was disappointed but there was nothing he could do; the weather forecast had warned everybody to stay inside. A snowstorm was blowing up the east coast and if he tried to go out in it and drive to Massachusetts, he’d definitely get caught up. It was too dangerous.

  
Although he’d do just about anything for her and to see her, he didn’t want to risk hurting himself on the way to MIT and risk never seeing her again. They’d almost died in front of each other too many times to count, he didn’t want this to be the time that counted.

  
“Listen, Lydia …” Stiles began with a sigh. “We’ll reschedule for next weekend, okay? As soon as the storm passes, even. The moment I can get on the road, I will, and I’ll drive all night to get to you. I promise.”

  
“It’s too dangerous,” she answered, withdrawn. “Let’s just wait until another time. Next month, maybe?”

  
“Next _month_?”

  
“This year is important for the both of us. As much as I'd like to see you, we should prioritise." She paused, disappointed. "Besides, we’re not in Beacon Hills anymore, Stiles, it rains _and_ it snows here. It’s too dangerous to go out in, and if there are weather warnings … Well, we need to respect that.”

  
Stiles hesitated for a moment before he said, “You’re right. We’ll figure something out soon.”

  
Lydia knew that they’d made the right decision, but she couldn’t help but feel disappointed Stiles hadn’t tried to get to her more. He hadn’t put up much of a fight, then again, it was Stiles. She didn’t expect him to know when she wanted him to fight and when she didn’t. He needed telling that kind of thing, and she hadn’t explicitly told him that she wanted to see him more than some stupid weather warning.

  
“So,” she said, “tell me about your day. Did you get your mark back for that paper you submitted last week?”

  
Stiles launched in a comical anecdote about the nutty professor who had marked his paper, and Lydia laid down on her bed so she could listen to Stiles’s voice in her ear, the same as she did most nights. And it was nice – of course it was nice. She loved talking to him on the phone, but she would have preferred the real thing more.

 

***

 

Stiles woke up the next morning at 6 a.m., early even for his standards, and crept out of bed so as not to wake his sleeping room-mate, opening the curtain a fraction to check the weather.

  
As predicted, a thick layer of snow blanketed the campus and the clouds above his head were thick with the forthcoming threat of snow. Groaning, he collapsed back into his bed and pulled the covers over his head.

  
Another week without Lydia. Another week without catching whiffs of her perfume or listening to her talk about their friends back home, or talking to her about their classes or just being able to fill her in on what was going on in his life. Equally, he wanted to hear about her week and how she was coping with college – though he knew she’d be fitting in with ease and was probably already leagues ahead of her classmates.

College was overwhelming and frightening, but Lydia, even without her physically being around, made him feel better. She was a constant for him; a presence that never failed to calm him down when his anxiety threatened to get the better of him.

If talking to her on the phone – after a gruelling week of lectures and six five-thousand word papers due in the same week – made him feel instantly better, so actually _seeing_ her? He could only imagine how that would lift his mood.

  
He lifted his covers and stood up in the middle of his room, thoughts and plans whirling around his head. He didn’t want to wait an indefinite amount of time to see her. He wanted to see her now – or, at least, in eight hours’ time when he arrived at her dorm. Scott had given Roscoe back to him after saying he couldn’t drive stick shift anyway, and it felt weird driving the Jeep that had always belonged to Stiles, so Stiles had his car back.

He was glad too; giving it to Scott had been an act of spontaneity and generosity that he’d regretted almost as soon as he’d handed the keys over. However, he had promised Scott that he’d teach him to drive stick shift and he could use it whenever he wanted or needed to.

  
After getting dressed, pulling on his George Washington sweatshirt and the warmest clothes he could find, he grabbed his phone and keys from his bedside table and left the dorm room, whistling to himself on the way out. His RA waved at him from down the hallway.

  
“Hey, Stiles.”

  
“Hey, Adam,” Stiles said, instinctively sliding his car keys into the pocket of his jeans so Adam didn’t notice he was going anywhere.

What could he say? Years of sneaking around Beacon Hills’ school, library, police department and veterinary clinic meant that he’d become slick at hiding any sneaky behaviour that was about to commence.

  
“Where are you heading off to so early?”

  
“Just to the library.”

  
“In this weather?”

  
Stiles nodded. “I’m dedicated.”

  
“Well,” Adam laughed. “You’re more dedicated than me – don’t stay out too late, will you? Weather warnings are all day.”

  
“Sure,” Stiles agreed, slipping past Adam with a wave goodbye. He left the dormitory block and escaped to the parking lot, jumping into the Jeep and shivering until he got the heat blasting around the vehicle.

A couple of minutes later, he gingerly edged the car forwards at a snail’s pace until he was out of the parking lot, then off campus, until he was on his way to Lydia.

 

***

 

Lydia stared out of the window of her dorm room, watching as the snow fell and covered the green surroundings of her dorm block. It was 6:15 a.m. and she’d woken up twenty minutes earlier, restless and like something wasn’t quite right.

  
It wasn’t her banshee powers. Since leaving Beacon Hills months earlier, she’d hardly felt a pull to the supernatural.

Occasionally, a weird feeling would settle over her and she’d feel a twisting in the gut of her stomach – but sometimes she thought that was when Stiles was going through something. When he was nervous about a test, or whenever he got anxious about something, she felt a pull in her stomach like she _knew_ something was wrong. After calling him a few times after this had first happened, she’d discovered these small things; she knew when he was worried, she could feel his emotions like they were her own, especially when she tuned into them. It was her connection to him. The emotional tether – it kept them together even when they were 450 miles away from each other.

  
And she could feel something happening right then, like Stiles was doing something he shouldn’t. He was nervous, or scared? Whatever it was, there was something inexplicably wrong, and she’d learnt to trust the feeling and the voices inside her head.

  
After ten more minutes of deliberating, she threw on some warm clothes and snatched her MIT sweatshirt from the closet in case she got cold, before she grabbed her car keys, phone and purse from her bedside table and tore out of the room.

  
The walk to her car was eerily quiet, almost like she was walking through a ghost town. She almost slipped a few times on the snow, her high-heeled suede boots sinking into the fresh snow and soaking right through almost immediately. Hastily, she got into her car and blasted the heat to warm herself up before inching from the parking space and heading in the direction off campus.

  
With this gut feeling in her stomach, there was no way she was going to sit at home and do nothing. She had to get to Stiles.

 

***

 

The highway was almost empty, something that might have encouraged Stiles on any other trip but concerned him on this one. He’d tried calling Lydia to let her know his plans, but she wasn’t picking up her phone.

  
Although half of him wanted to surprise her, he also knew she’d be sick with worry. Especially since she’d started getting those banshee-esque intuitions whenever he felt anxious over something.

The first time she’d called him, out of the blue asking if he was okay just after he’d received a mark for a paper he hadn’t done so well on, he’d passed it off as chance. The second time it had happened? Coincidence. The third? A pattern.

  
Lydia seemed to know when he wasn’t okay, when he was feeling off about something, and she always called him, demanding to know if he was in trouble. For that reason, he tried to squash his anxieties down on driving along the treacherously dangerous highway to Lydia, knowing that she’d be worried about him already and trying to minimise the damage.

  
He was almost halfway, and when he was halfway he planned to stop off for a cup of coffee and some food at a Gas & Go. He’d marked on a map the exact point he would be halfway to Lydia, but he was already getting tired. Maybe setting off before the sun had even woken up hadn’t been the best idea, but he was desperate and he didn’t want to wait any longer than he had to.

  
His phone, connected to his speakers beside him, began to ring and he jabbed a finger at it to answer the call, trying not to take his eyes off the road. He assumed it would be Lydia, finally returning his many calls, but it was Scott.

  
“Why,” Scott’s groggy voice sounded on the other end of the phone, “are you calling me at six in the morning?”

  
Whoops. Stiles was so used to talking to Scott whenever he wanted that he still hadn’t quite come to terms with the three-hour time difference, and even though it was almost 9 o’clock in Stiles’s time zone, it wasn’t even 6 a.m. in Scott’s. And, to make matters worse, Stiles had left a couple of messages on his phone and had been texting him since 7 a.m., Stiles’s time.

  
“I’m going to see Lydia,” Stiles announced.

  
Scott took a long time before he answered. Like, a very long time. Stiles waited on the other end impatiently; he’d hoped that announcement would have a bit more … _effect_ than it seemed to have had. He blamed it on the time. Scott was not a morning person.

  
“Okay?” Scott said finally. “I thought that was the plan anyway? You guys have been talking about it for weeks.”

  
“Months, Scott, _months_ ,” Stiles reiterated to his best friend tensely. “And the snow, Scott! Come on, man. The _snowstorm_!”

  
Scott was quiet for a few minutes. Then he said, “I’m in California, Stiles. It’s pretty sunny here.”

  
Right. Stiles always forgot about that minor difference too.

“There’s a giant storm along the east coast and I’m … currently halfway to Massachusetts, driving through the thick of it.”

  
“Are you crazy?”

  
“Crazy about Lydia,” Stiles answered without hesitation.

  
“Stiles, it sounds dangerous.”

  
“And since when did I shy away from danger?” Stiles argued. “It’s practically my middle name.”

  
“You should turn back,” Scott said, ignoring his comment. “Lydia will understand – she can wait another week.”

  
“But _I_ can’t,” Stiles insisted. “Come on, Scott, where’s your sense of romance and adventure? This is _Lydia_ we’re talking about here: the girl I’ve been in love with since third grade. We’re finally together but we’re not even together most of the time. I’m almost halfway to Massachusetts, I’m going to stop and get some rest.”

  
“Maybe you should let me do that too,” Scott replied, yawning as if on cue. “Call me when you get there, and say hi to Lydia for me. Be careful out there.”

  
“Will do,” Stiles promised, already reaching over to hang up the phone call. He always felt better after talking to Scott, and he hoped it would settle the ball of nerves in his stomach that he was sure Lydia would have sensed by now.

  
He just couldn’t work out for the life of him why she hadn’t returned any of his calls – it was unlike her. He was worried about her, just like she was probably worried about him. Even though it was dangerous, Stiles inched his foot down onto the gas, speeding towards the Gas  & Go, and, eventually, Lydia.

 

***

 

Lydia had marked on a map the halfway point between Massachusetts and George Washington University.

  
In less than an hour, she’d stop at a tiny Gas & Go on the side of the highway, grab a coffee and be on her way again. She wanted to get to Stiles as fast as she could; the niggling feeling in her stomach hadn’t gone away.

  
She tapped her fingernails on her steering wheel impatiently, wishing she could speed forward in time and just get to Stiles’s dorm. She wanted to see his face when he opened the door to find her standing on the other side. She imagined the look on his face would be a similar state of shock to the first time she’d shown up at his house at home, almost like he couldn’t believe his luck.

  
Thinking back on their relationship calmed and distracted her from concentrating on the feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she turned up the volume on her music and tried to think about that instead. It was a band Stiles had introduced her to; she tapped her leg along to the lyrics. Her phone began to ring and she reached precariously into the back of her car, fumbling around for it and hoping it was Stiles.

  
It was Malia.

  
She answered the call and selected loudspeaker.

  
“Hey, Lydia,” Malia said on the other end. “Have you read _Othello_?”

  
“Of course I have,” Lydia answered, her eyes sliding over to the clock on her dashboard as she figured out how much of the journey she had left.

Another forty minutes until she could stop for a break, and then another four hours of driving. She pressed her foot down on the gas a little bit, despite knowing it was dangerous.

  
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Malia answered, “I have to read it for my Shakespeare class. I don’t even _like_ Shakespeare – why should we study some old, dead, British guy who couldn’t even speak real English?”

  
Lydia sighed. “What do you need help with?”

  
“A full character analysis of Desdemona?” Malia suggested hopefully, and Lydia sighed again. Luckily, she’d written countless papers on _Othello_ and her favourite topic was Desdemona; she practically had the notes memorised.

  
“Do you have a pen?”

  
“And three different coloured highlighters,” Malia responded.

  
“Okay,” Lydia said, “listen closely. I have forty minutes to spare.”

 

***

 

He was getting tired and the stop was still ten minutes away.

  
Blinking rapidly to keep the sleep at bay, he adjusted the volume dial to turn up the music of one of his favourite bands. He’d tried to get Lydia to listen to them, and she’d promised him she would, but he knew how busy she was. With her schedule, she didn’t have time for music.

  
Finally, he saw the sign for the rest stop and pulled into the turning a few minutes later, stopping in a parking space and cutting the engine of the Jeep. He took a few minutes to rub his eyes and gather himself together before he got out of the vehicle, and headed inside.

 

***

 

She saw the sign for the Gas & Go fifteen minutes later and turned in just a few minutes later, parking in the nearest spot and getting out of the car.

  
She was tired, verging on passing out tired, but she could have sworn she could see Stiles’s Jeep over at the other end of the parking lot.

She blinked a few times, but it was still there, and she was pretty sure nobody else in the world would want to own anything like that.

  
Feeling dazed, she began walking into the Gas & Go, intending to buy – and down – a cup of strong coffee so she would stop seeing the clearly false image of Roscoe in the parking lot, but the door opened before she could reach it and a tall, dark-haired man stepped out.

He was wearing a George Washington University sweatshirt, and his hair stuck up at all ends, like it did when he’d been running his fingers through it impatiently.

  
He stopped and looked at her, blinking a few times, and she stared back at him.

  
“Stiles?”

  
“Lydia?”

  
“Are you …” Lydia shook her head. “Are you _real_? Are you here?”

  
“Yeah,” Stiles answered, taking a step towards her. “I’m definitely here. You’re here. You’re _here_? At Gas and Go?”

  
“So are you!”

  
They took another step towards each other and he reached his hand out, his fingers touching the side of her face softly, almost like he was still trying to work out if she was real.

  
“You drove all the way here for me?” Lydia asked.

  
“You did the same for me,” Stiles said with a laugh, pulling her closer and wrapping his arms around her.

He breathed in the scent of her perfume, the scent that he often managed to find on his pillowcase after she’d been around his, or in the air after she’d been in his room. The scent he associated with her, and only her.

  
“I wanted to see you,” Lydia said, pulling away from him.

With Stiles, she didn’t want to pretend. She was so used to pretending; he was the only person who could see through any façade she put up and any role she played. He knew her, he’d _always_ known her.

  
“I wanted to see you too,” he said, then added, “I love you so much.”

  
“I love you too,” she told him, pulling away for long enough to look him in the eye. “I was worried about you. I got this feeling inside me, like you were in trouble, like you were worried about something.”

  
“I was worried I was going to miss out on spending time with you,” he told her. “Do you feel anything now?”

  
She thought about it, then shook her head.

“No. All I feel is contentedness.”

  
He nodded. “Me too.”

  
It wasn’t how either of them imagined it, but somehow, it was better.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much if you took the time to read this! It's my first Stiles/Lydia fic and any feedback/Kudos is greatly appreciated! ❤️ P.S. If anybody wants to suggest any college prompts, please do!


End file.
